While T-Mobile and Jio operate in starkly different conditions, they are both driving their own brand of innovation. What’s great about T-Mobile and Jio is they tend to plan two steps ahead. Whether they think “outside the box” or they are just playing a different game, the results most often make an impact that competitors need to respond to. When you waltz, someone leads, the other follows…
Earlier this week Verizon announced they would reinstate unlimited plans (here) and T-Mobile has moved their cheese again. Verizon’s $80 plan was designed to compete with their rival T-Mobile’s ONE unlimited data plan which costs $70 per month. Verizon sets itself apart from T-Mobile by giving a 10GB of tethering data per month with a full HD video streaming to customers.
In response T-Mobile supped their T-Mobile One (Binge On) plan by adding high-definition video and 10GB of high-speed hotspot usage to its $70 unlimited smartphone data plan.
Legere, T-Mobile superstar CEO, addressed Verizon’s change on T-Mobile’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call Tuesday morning.
“We drag the carriers kicking and screaming to the future,” he said. T-Mobile had ushered in the industry’s move to unlimited data last year.
T-Mobile added 2.1 million customers during the quarter, continuing a trend that vaulted it past Sprint to become the No. 3 carrier in 2015.
On the other side of the world, in India, Reliance Jio has only been around for a few months (hard to believe) but is already making waves and serious headaches for competitors. With its free 4G services, the new entrant has already bagged 73 million subscribers in just over 100 days from its inception and also it is quickest one to achieve the milestone. Having said that, customers are going crazy about the free 4G services and so does rival telecom operators.
To compete with Reliance Jio, India’ second largest telecom network, Vodafone recently launched SuperHour packs, where the company is offering unlimited data/voice calls on an hourly basis by charging a nominal amount. And these plans received a massive response from the audience, which in fact forced Idea to launch their hourly packs. In addition, operators such as Airtel, Idea, and Vodafone are rolling out daily data packs too.
Two companies setting the agenda in to very different environments. Good for consumers, tough for competitors, great for the industry!
More Here [LatinPost] [NewsDog]
This article was first published on PricingDataPlans.
Hi Johnathon,
At the end of your article you say Good for consumers, tough for competitors, great for the industry!
The question I have is “why is this good for the industry?”
I can see that it’s good for consumers. I can see why it’s tough for competitors. Then I ask “If it’s tough for competitors, what has Jio done that is so different to these competitors that makes them better able to survive heavy discounting?” The next obvious question, if it is that tough, how sustainable is it? I regularly read of tough times, staff layoffs etc in the carrier industry. Seems that the industry may be growing in size, but how good a financial shape is it really in?
Roger
I’ll help you with the jio part. I used to live in India when this massive evolution took place. So lets go back to the time before jio. Before jio, all the operators that had 4g support used to charge about 150 indian rupees per gb or about $2.25. During this period, a lot of people had to adjust especially the ones with a smartphone. And then in the September of 2016, the CEO of Reliance, Mukesh Ambani introduced jio. When jio was introduced, he promised free data till december and free calling forever. Although they mentioned that the data provided was unlimited, people were only given 4gb of data per day after which the speed would slow down drastically till 12:09 AM. But it wasn’t really a problem for anyone as this was the first time we were getting a good amount of data and that too for free. After december, it would be 51 rupees for 1gb, 98 for 2 gb and so on. Basically is was much cheaper than what the other operators used to offer. When people realised that, they felt cheated and that’s when they made the switch to jio. And apart from that, the whole registration process was really quick too. Now what made it even harder for the other operators is that after december, Jio gave it’s users another 3 months free (till the 31st of March). Now what made it even better was that, the users who purchased a monthly plan after the 31st of March, got another 3 months free. And apart from just the calling and the good amount of data, Jio introduced a lot of apps like Jio music, jio cinema, jio tv and much more where as the other operators barely had any. This is why people love Jio.